Cardinals in the Compost

“Look, David, there’s a Cardinal in your composter,” Lori said. 

The bright red Cardinals immediately spark joy for us. We’ve seen as many as 10-12 Cardinals gathering around my composters. They don’t actually get in the compost; they are living ornaments adorning the otherwise plain and ugly. 

“Cardinals in the compost,” I said, echoing her words, “What a contrast: beauty amidst rotting vegetables, fruit, and coffee and tea grounds.”

Lori and I love watching the birds in our backyard. Our kids tease us that it’s a sign we are getting old. “Bird watching helps keep us young,” I tell them. So, a year ago, they bought us a bird feeder that captures the live images of the birds while they are feeding. It’s entertaining. We try to identify the birds, whether the thieving Blue Jays, the neighborly Yellowthroats, the common Sparrows, or the ravenous Wrens. The Red-bellied Woodpecker made a rare appearance, gracing us with his presence. (Perhaps the kids are right: such excitement over birds may indicate our age.)

But our favorite is the Northern Cardinal, the most stunning, frequent visitor to our birdfeeder. 

Perhaps it’s my hyper-active imagination, but I think I noticed more Cardinals last week during the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The German Nazis murdered approximately 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, but also Poles and other nationalities. Auschwitz is a symbol of the Holocaust and the atrocities of World War II. In 2005, the United Nations declared January 27 as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. So last week, I read and heard survivor story after survivor story from that horrid place and time. The 80th year commemoration is significant. It won’t be long until there will be no survivors. 

As Ronald J. Lauder, the President of the World Jewish Congress and Chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, told the NY Times, “This is the most important anniversary we are going to have because of the shrinking number of survivors and because of what is happening in the world today.” He was referencing the events of October 7 of last year. “Fifteen months ago, not 80 years ago, we saw Jewish children slaughtered. Once again, for one reason, because they were born Jewish. In a very fundamental way, what happened in Israel on October 7 and what happened here in Auschwitz have one common thread; the age-old hatred of Jews.”

Hatred is poisonous anywhere, anytime; Auschwitz reminds us of its dark underbelly that sucks evil into it with the power of a black hole.

But amid the ugliness, there is yet beauty.

Like the photo of 3-4-year-old Istan Reiner from Miskolc, Hungary, taken just before he was deported to the Auschwitz death camp, where he was murdered in the gas chamber. He is wearing the happy smile of an innocent child, not too different from the look on my grandchildren’s faces when I tell them I’m taking them to the candy store. Sadly, Istan had no idea what awaited him.

Not all had to step foot into Auschwitz’s refuse pit to shine with love. The photo of Sir Nicolas Winton, the once British stockbroker, was taken when some of the 669 children (now adults) he heroically rescued from Auschwitz greeted him. Winton is aged in the picture, but his joy, expressed in tears, is reminiscent of the picture of little Miskolc before entering Auschwitz’s death gates.

Jesus, the Savior, was crucified in a compost pile called Golgotha. Yet as the Scripture declares, “That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The memoirist and poet Maya Angelou wrote, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

Some of the Auschwitz survivors, like a bird with a song, could not help but deliver the music because they were the song. Like Cardinals surrounding compost piles, they brought life in death, light in darkness, and hope in despair, even as they declared: “Never again.”

And because the darkness could not overcome them, their light continues to shine today, 80 years later, with a song of victory reverberating through eternity.